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The Top Secret History of America’s Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Warfare Programs and Their Deployment Overseas

At its peak in 1967, the U.S. nuclear arsenal consisted of 31,255 nuclear weapons with an aggregate destructive power of 12,786 megatons – more than sufficient to wipe out all of humanity several hundred times over. Much less known is that hidden away in earth-covered bunkers spread throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan, over 40,000 tons of American chemical weapons were stored, as well as thousands of specially designed bombs that could be filled with even deadlier biological warfare agents. The American WMD programs remain cloaked in secrecy, yet a substantial number of revealing documents have been quietly declassified since the late 1970s. Put together, they tell the story of how America secretly built up the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The documents explain the role these weapons played in a series of world crises, how they shaped U.S. and NATO defense and foreign policy during the Cold War, and what incidents and nearly averted disasters happened. Moreover, they shed a light on the dreadful human and ecological legacy left by decades of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons manufacturing and testing in the U.S. and overseas. This collection contains more than 2,300 formerly classified U.S. government documents, most of them classified Top Secret or higher. Covering the period from the end of World War II to the present day, it provides unique access to previously unpublished reports, memoranda, cables, intelligence briefs, classified articles, PowerPoint presentations, military manuals and directives, and other declassified documents. Following years of archival research and careful selection, they were brought together from the U.S. National Archives, ten U.S. presidential libraries, the NATO Archives in Brussels, the National Archives of the UK, the National Archives of Canada, and the National Archives of the Netherlands. In addition, a sizeable number of documents in this collection were obtained from the U.S. government and the Pentagon using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) requests. This collection comes with several auxiliary aids, including a chronology and a historiographical essay with links to the documents themselves, providing context and allowing for easy navigation for both students and scholars.
Highlights: • The papers in this collection detail how America’s stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were developed, the staggering costs that were involved, the network of laboratories where the bombs and their components were designed and developed, new details about the dozens of secret factories spread across the U.S. where these lethal bombs and warheads were built, the sites where they were tested, and even newly released information about some of the storage depots where the weapons were deployed in the U.S. and overseas. • This collection contains for the first time ever a comprehensive set of declassified documents which quantify the size and destructive power of the American nuclear, chemical and biological weapons stockpile throughout the Cold War era, including new details about the many different types of weapons in these arsenals, such as nuclear landmines (Atomic Demolition Munitions) and even a nuclear-capable recoilless rifle system. • This collection contains hundreds of pages of declassified Defense Department and State Department documents concerning the secret negotiations between the U.S. government and over fifteen foreign governments concerning the deployment of nuclear and chemical weapons to their countries (complete biological weapons were never deployed overseas), as well as the even more difficult task later in the Cold War of trying to get permission to remove these weapons after they had outlived their usefulness. In some instances, the U.S. government deliberately did not inform the host nations that they had deployed nuclear and chemical weapons to their countries, as in the case of Japan, which was shocked to learn in 1969 that the U.S. was storing large numbers of nuclear and chemical weapons on the island of Okinawa without their knowledge or consent. • Also included are over a hundred declassified documents regarding U.S. nuclear war plans, detailing how the American nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were to be used in wartime, including lists of their targets inside the USSR and the People’s Republic of China; newly declassified documents containing the details of all known nuclear, chemical and biological weapons accidents, some of which produced fatal results; and incidents involving attempts by foreign governments (Greece, Turkey and South Korea) to pressure the U.S. government by threatening to seize American nuclear weapons stored on their soil. Finally, there are recently released files concerning an attempt by a terrorist group to penetrate a U.S. nuclear weapons storage site in West Germany.
Number of documents: 2,374
Number of pages: ca. 21,212
Auxiliary aids: • Introductory essay • Glossary of acronyms • Chronology • Bibliography • MARC21 catalog records
Sourcing archives: • U.S. National Archives, Legislative Archives Branch, Washington, D.C. • U.S. National Archives. Military Records Branch, College Park, Maryland • U.S. National Archives, Civilian Records Branch, College Park, Maryland • North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Archives, Brussels, Belgium • National Archives of Canada, Ottawa, Canada • National Archives of the Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands • National Archives of the UK, Kew, Great Britain • Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland • Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri • Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas • John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts • Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas • Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda, California • Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan • Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Atlanta, Georgia • Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California • George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, Houston, Texas • William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock, Arkansas • Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. • DOD FOIA Reading Room, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. • U.S. Army Center for Military History, Washington, D.C. • Naval Historical Center Operational Archives, Washington, D.C. • U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama • Department of Energy, Office of Scientific and Technical Information, Washington, D.C. • Douglas MacArthur Library, Norfolk, Virginia (Douglas MacArthur Papers) • George C. Marshall Library, Lexington, Virginia (George C. Marshall Papers) • Mudd Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (George W. Ball Papers) • National Security Archive, Washington, D.C. (Chuck Hansen Collection) • Maryland Historical Trust, Annapolis, Maryland
See also the companion collections Cold War Intelligence, U.S. Intelligence on Asia, 1945-1991, U.S. Intelligence on Europe, 1945-1995 and U.S. Intelligence on the Middle East, 1945-2009.

Prize Papers Online 3 contains approximately 4,000 interrogations of members of the crew of ships taken during the First, Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (ca. 1652-1674) and the War of the Spanish Succession (ca. 1701-1733). It shows images of each interrogation (of two, three, sometimes even six or more pages). Answers to the fourteen most researched questions are transcribed and stored in a searchable database. The Anglo-Dutch Wars (First: 1652-1654; Second: 1665-1667; Third: 1672-1674) were a series of wars fought between the English (later British) and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries for control over the seas and trade routes.The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784) is part of
PPO 1.
This collection is part of
Prize Papers Online (PPO).

Major Reference Work
(Online)

Codices Hugeniani Online (COHU) offers the fully digitized archive of Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695), held at Leiden University Library. The archive includes notebooks and loose leafs with texts in the field of astronomy, mechanics, mathematics and music, as well as correspondence and annotated books.
Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist. He published major studies on mechanics and optics, and a pioneer work on games of chance. He is famous for his discovery of the rings of Saturn and its moon Titan, and for inventing the pendulum clock.
Shortly before his death in 1695 Huygens bequeathed a large part of his scholarly papers to Leiden University Library. After 1800, the legacy was further enriched by manuscripts and letters from family property, amongst others a large number of letters from Huygens' father Constantijn (1596 - 1687).
For over three centuries, many scholars have made the
Codices Hugeniani the object of their research. The contents of the archive have been made partly accessible through the well-known
Oeuvres complètes (a 19-volume 19th Century reference work). More recently, the
Codices Hugeniani were described in detail by Dr. Joella Yoder in her
Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Christiaan Huygens (Brill, 2013). With COHU the full archive's contents are now easily accessible for the first time.
Features and benefitsSections COHU is logically organized in the same way as the original archive, i.e. 52 codices as main entrances, enabling an overview of the archive as a whole.
Advanced search options In each codex the scans are offered in smaller groupings ranging from 1 to several dozen folios each. These groupings are all described with detailed metadata. This offers the possibility of an advanced search for specific topics, etc.
Rich metadata For a large part the metadata are taken from Joella Yoder’s catalogue. This is the most authoritative overview and the outcome of 20+ years of hard work. The book contains valuable information about the archive that is not in the Leiden University Library's catalogue.
Direct link between famous Oeuvres complètesand archive The COHU metadata offer a concordance between the physical archive and the
Oeuvres complètes.

Major Reference Work
(Online)

• Dates (inclusive): 1944-1967 • Languages used: predominantly Russian • EAD finding aids are available •
Location of originals: Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), Moscow Artek’s Archive reflects the recreation camp’s history in the period between 1944 and 1967. It contains government documents on Soviet social and health policies, administrative, medical and financial records, transcripts of meetings, materials on educational and ideological work carried out in the camp statistical reports, food rations and provision standards, letters from Soviet and foreign children, diaries etc. These documents provide an insight into everyday life and mentality of Soviet children. The archive is a valuable resource for a wide circle of researchers in such fields as sociology, cultural studies, philology and political history. All earlier records were lost during the Second World War when Artek was under German occupation.

Major Reference Work
(Online)

World War II Era Records of the World Council of ChurchesHistorical background The documents in this collection form a subset of the World Council of Churches archives dating from 1932 to 1957. They were assembled hurriedly and in a very provisional form during the “dark days” of the war by an administration just being born and still in the making. Under such chaotic conditions, some elements were inevitably lost and the original order of the records was difficult to reconstruct. Yet a dramatic story is revealed here, the story of the fledgling ecumenical movement’s thought, policy, and activities in the face of the power of Nazi Germany. The ecumenical movement represents the effort of churches divided for centuries to re-establish contact with each other, to rediscover their common heritage, to explore possibilities for collaboration, to react in situations of crisis, and to find a new place within society by participating in the foundation of a new world community. To achieve these ends, the churches founded many organizations, including the International Missionary Council in 1910, the Life and Work movement in 1925, and the Faith and Order movement in 1927. In 1938, the Life and Work and Faith and Order movements came together to form the World Council of Churches, which was officially inaugurated in Amsterdam in 1948. Today the World Council of Churches is a worldwide fellowship of churches from different traditions: Orthodox (Oriental and Eastern Orthodox), Anglican, Old Catholic, most mainline Protestant churches (Moravian, Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist), the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Quakers, Church of the Brethren), and some evangelical churches (like Baptist and Pentecostal). Although the Roman Catholic Church is not a member, it participates as a member of the Commission on Faith and Order and sends official observers to all major meetings, such as the general assemblies. During the Second World War, the World Council of Churches in Process of Formation was instrumental in smuggling several hundred Jews across the borders into Switzerland, actively helped by courageous and inventive young French workers affiliated with CIMADE (Comité Inter-Movement Auprès Des Evacués). Reflecting on this era, Dr. W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, then General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, wrote "… as I look back on these attempts to help the Jews during the war years, I feel far from proud. I know that I should have done a great deal more." Not all the sources testifying to this period have been preserved, but what remains is gathered in this collection.
Sections In 2013 the WCC Archives moved in the newly arranged "Espace Archives", located in the west wing of the former Library premises in the backyard of the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva. The WCC Library united its collections at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, near Geneva. The WCC archives are divided into many different sections, reflecting the various bodies that have been active in the ecumenical scene during the 20th century. The records of the International Missionary Council and the General Correspondence Archives of the World Council of Churches’ General Secretariat, previously published on microfiche by BRILL/IDC Publishers, are examples of such sections. The present collection is the first collection from the WCC that is made available electronically. Originally on microfiche, the collection covers the period from 1932 to 1957. The documents consist of newspapers, press clippings, press releases, telegrams, correspondence, minutes, manuscripts, and personal notes. The boxes are organized by 16 countries, mostly European (Austria, Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia), but also the United States of America, Colombia, and Israel, as well as China and Indonesia. Records relating to Germany account alone for thirty boxes.
Scholarly relevance These archives have been studied by historians of the Bergier Commission, a commission set up to investigate the role of Switzerland during the Second World War, and many individual scholars. The collection includes correspondence and personal letters of such notable individuals as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, George Bell, Hans Schönfeld, Karl Barth, James McDonald, Georges Casalis, Adolf Freudenberg, Martin Niemöller, Otto Dibelius, Gerhart Riegner, Marc Boegner, and Willem Adolf Visser 't Hooft. The archives document not only the issues and events of the War, but also the beginning years of the World Council of Churches. The material in this collection is of high value for researchers from different disciplines, such as political and historical sciences as well as church history, theology, ethics, and ecumenical studies. Churches from different parts of the world, like China, Israel, or Colombia, might find material here that help to interpret their own history, by original documents from their own offices and individuals as well as by documented views from other churches and ecumenical bodies. As Dr. Visser 't Hooft wrote: "The war came. And at first it seemed as if it would at least mean that the clock of ecumenical history would be definitely set back. The staff became smaller and smaller. Many plans had to be cancelled. But right in the midst of war the tide turned. What new contacts between the churches lost in frequency, they gained in intensity and depth. The war did not weaken the council. On the contrary."
Pierre Beffa (former Director of the World Council of Churches Library), revised by Fernando Enns, Professor of (Peace-) Theology and Ecumenical Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.This publication came about with support from the Kenneth Scott Latourette Fund, Yale Divinity School Library.

Major Reference Work
(Online)

• Languages used: English, German, French, Italian, Latin • MARC records are available Accounts of travel are a popular and accessible source for research on historical relations between “East” and “West” and are attractive for specialists and non-specialists alike. In the pre-modern period a large number of such accounts were published all over Europe. Predominantly covering the Ottoman Empire, the collection also stretches into Ethiopia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, North Africa, and of course Iran.

Major Reference Work
(Online)

• Number of titles: 654 • Languages used: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Russian, Dutch, German and Portuguese • Title list and printed guide are available •
Location of originals: Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London This new online collection comprises a descriptive, annotated bibliography of 654 early Western books on Imperial China up to 1850, all to be found in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. The collection is based on the book Western Books on China published up to 1850 by John Lust. The material is of unique historical interest, containing a scrutiny of China by Western societies.. The books, in a variety of Western languages, testify to the formidable difficulties encountered by Westerners, who attempted to extend their own familiar historical, linguistic and religious perceptions to the Chinese context.